THIS week’s album reviews from The Courier-Mail (ratings out of five stars).

POP

VELOCIRAPTOR

Velociraptor (Dot Dash)

****

WHAT is pop? The most obvious answer is it’s what’s popular. But right now Paloma Faith, Five Seconds of Summer and Angus and Julia Stone are all popular and as different as can be.

When I was a kid glued to top 40 radio, Alice Cooper and Cat Stevens and Johnny Cash and Blackfeather might all be battling it out on the charts. So “popular” isn’t that useful a definition of pop.

Maybe it’s a generational thing. For some, Frank Sinatra or Nat King Cole are pop. For me it’s Phil Spector singles and The Beatles and The Beach Boys and The Monkees, oh, and The Kinks and The Walker Brothers too. In the ’70s, there was Blondie and The Ramones, who soaked up all that was great about ’60s pop and spat it back out in a way that made it feel brand new. All of this was pop music that not only made my day better, it made my life better.

For a new generation pop might be Lily Allen or Gotye or Coldplay, or all of them.

But right now, the most pop thing on my player is this debut album from Velociraptor, 11 tracks that meet my criteria of popness: direct, catchy, songs about being young and lonesome, hopeful yet blue. Bonus points: they sing about “hit parades” and somehow make “options open’’ and “comatosis’’ feel like a rhyme. They also nail the other vital element of a good pop band. Those catchy melodies and familiar stories don’t lose their flavour with repetition.

Two points to note. Velociraptor are from Brisbane, not that it matters: They could come from Caracas or Kathmandu and this would still be a great record. But I point it out because this is a band you can go and see, or possibly find yourself pouring over the same records at the record fair, thus giving you the opportunity to tell them that their record is groovy.

The other key point is that there are lots of them. In fact, the blueprint for the band, with loads of guitarists and members on loan from other projects, such as DZ Deathrays and chief ’Raptor Jeremy Neale, is so unwieldy that it shouldn’t work.

Yet on Velociraptor it does — and to sometimes spine-tingling effect. With producer Sean Cook, formerly of Yves Klein Blue, they seem to keep the guitar tracks to a minimum, so it doesn’t sound like there are 10 people flailing away on a chord.

Simplicity is a necessity, and in their world that’s a good thing. It’s a miracle just to get eight, 10 or 12 people together at the one time — let alone to Perth and home again on their national tour — so asking them all to learn a B flat minor ninth add 13 would be pushing the friendship.

Robocop is a song The Ramones could have covered, with throbbing guitars and a melody that sinks its hooks in deep. That’s Neale on Ramona too, where the buzz saw guitars create an irresistible force and nobody blushes at singing about “my girl’’ in the call and response.

Others take the lead at various stages, the darker despair of Leaches and All You Need , the pop thrills of Hollywood Teen and the true confessions of I Don’t Know Why, the kind of song Brian Wilson might have written.

Does it matter if a band is called “pop’’ or “rock’’? Well, people have been banned on radio stations for less, so it can do. But not when you are dancing like a crazy loon in your bedroom to a band who prove that — 50 years after The Beatles came to town — razor-sharp melodies and energetic guitars will never go out of style.

“Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr Epstein.’’ Wrong!

Noel Mengel

CLASSICAL

GABRIEL FAURE

Requiem (LSO Live/Sony)

***1/2

A SENSE of peace pervades Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem, a “yearning for the happiness beyond, a lullaby of death” as it was described at the time. Premiered in 1884, it was repeated at the Church of the Madeleine, Paris, in 1898 to honour those who died serving France in war. It appears again as a commemoration to war in this CD from The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, (Stephen Cleobury conducting, with organist Douglas Tang), released amid centenary events honouring the start of World War I horrors. A model of choral and instrumental technique, neat and tidily balanced, the performance of this version of the work reconstructed by Marc Rigaudière is rather vocally aggressive for music of such calm and restrained sensitivity. After all, Fauré excluded the grim Dies Irae from his setting of the funereal text. As a softener, organist Tom Etheridge leads gently into the short but sweet Cantique de Jean Racine with Fauré’s uncomplicated Messe Basse taking the program to a suitably tranquil close.

Patricia Kelly

ROCK

LIVINGSTONE DAISIES

Waiting on the Last Minute (Popboomerang)

***1/2

OK, YOU got me: a tune about ’70s NBA basketballer Pete Maravich, he of the no-look pass/double-pump jump shot (check the YouTube highlights and be dazzled). Any kid who dribbled their way through teenage years at that time loved his flamboyant game. So too did The Daisies’ Van Walker, and this eight-tracker closes out with his seven-minute anthem to Pistol Pete. This Melbourne band released a sizzling debut last year, Don’t Know What Happiness Is, and these tracks were recorded around the same time. The quality isn’t quite as high but there is still plenty of rock ’n’ roll joy to be had, from the feverish power-pop of Risking It All to the rueful reflections of Don’t Tell Me How The Story Ends. Around Here is a small-town anthem (“Round here you start out at the bottom/ Round here forget about the top’’) of the kind we once heard from Paul Kelly and the Messengers. Kill For Conversation is the one misstep. But songs as good as Pistol Pete, about someone who brought poetic artistry and showman’s panache to the sporting field, more than make up for that.

Noel Mengel

FOLK

KING CREOSOTE

From Scotland With Love (Domino)

****

KING Creosote, the nom de guerre for songwriter Kenny Anderson, cements his credentials in turning the everyday into something compelling for his paean to native Scotland. Quickly warming to narrating multiple-character perspectives, Anderson and a female vocalist narrate the story of a fishing village woman who yearns for a fisherman in Cargill. Similarly, the uncertainty of Scottish emigrants leaving home is addressed on the bittersweet Miserable Strangers. The album also has its lighter moments with the bemused tale of a seaside holiday on Largs and Anderson trading verses against a children’s chanting nursery rhyme on Bluebell, Cockleshell, 123. Other notables are the accordion-driven sigh of opener Something To Believe In and rocker For One Night Only. However, there’s none better than Pauper’s Dough,which explores the hopes of a working beggar. Intended as the audio accompaniment to the Commonwealth Games film of the same title, From Scotland With Love is rich with stories worth hearing.

Bill Johnston

METAL

FOZZY

Do You Wanna Start a War (Century Media/Universal)

***1/2

NO, THEY’RE not named after a Muppet, they’re named after a master of the macabre. The former covers band, originally known as Fozzy Osbourne, has WWE star Chris Jericho for a frontman. Their latest album satisfies the hardcore quotient while injecting a melodic quality that makes it accessible to a wider audience. The title track kicks off the album in stomping yet harmonic style, while melodies come to the fore on the album’s highlight, the affirmative anthem Unstoppable, featuring guest vocalist Christie Cook. Tonight is similarly radio-friendly, while Died With You is the resident power ballad and even ABBA’s SOS comes in for an unlikely makeover that still leaves the melody intact. Meanwhile, Scarecrow is Simon and Garfunkel meet Metallica. The chug-chug of Bad Tattoo is punctuated by guitar flourishes as Jericho bemoans: “I can’t wash you away.” Machine-gun percussion and demonic roaring vocals characterise Brides of Fire, while Lights Go Out gives voice to carnal instincts. If you’re even part metalhead you’d be a Muppet not to check this out.

John O’Brien

POP

CHRISSIE HYNDE

Stockholm (Caroline)

***

ON THIS, her debut solo album, Chrissie Hynde seems determined to distance herself as far as possible from the guitar-driven rock attack of The Pretenders, the band she has fronted for 35 years in various line-ups. Guitars are in fact noticeably absent on Stockholm, produced in staggered sessions over two years in that city by Swedish pop specialist Bjorn Yttling — with the notable exception of two tracks, respectively featuring Neil Young and John McEnroe (yes, I’m serious — the tennis guy). Young adds trademark menace and rumbling distortion to Down the Wrong Way, while McEnroe injects Plan Too Far with the six-string colour much of the album’s remaining material sorely lacks. While some of the songs stand up on the strength of Hynde’s distinctive vocal sass and songwriting skills, most sag beneath the weight of purely decorative keyboards, strings and annoying percussive effects (such as the dinky cowbells on Dark Sunglasses ). Next time, Hynde should simply plug in her Fender and give Pretenders drummer Martin Chambers a call.

Phil Stafford

INSTRUMENTAL

LAWRENCE ENGLISH

Wilderness of Mirrors (Room 40)

****

LIKE all art, music has a mood-altering and emotional force. It can also be used to make us think about our place in the world, our relationships with nature and each other. That’s what Brisbane electronic composer English has been doing in his now impressive catalogue of ambient works, but Wildernesss of Mirrors is a built on a towering, churning wall of sound, rolling out like a threatening thundercloud. The phrase of the title is from T.S. Eliot’s Gerontion, published in 1920, but here it refers to the composer’s unease at the political lurch to the right. Wilderness of Mirrors, which replaces melody and rhythm with an ever-shifting palette of tones and textures, is not for the distracted. It requires focus. English was influenced by seeing live shows by My Bloody Valentines and Swans, two of the more intense musical experiences on the planet, and the result is music that is more dense, “heavier’’, than previous work. But as well as the tension of a heavy heart there is also beauty and grace. It is music created to be heard as one piece, too. Albums a dying art? Not in English’s world.